Perspectives on Culture and Entertainment

Links of Interest (18 December 2011)

It’s no secret that the gaming industry is still unfortunately a very male dominated, male centric place (from the developers to the storylines to the in-game characters).

So it’s important to note that “realistic-looking” first-person shooters and other games that employ graphic violence and sexist imagery are not the only games out there even though they do tend to get most of the attention when it comes to talk of “serious” gaming.

Because I’m often frustrated with the male dominated, blood and guts, testosterone driven shoot em up games that seem to dominate the xbox and ps3 platforms, it’s refreshing to see so many games on Apple’s iOS that focuses on puzzle solving and creative storytelling.

Wiltshire writes, “Faced with an online world of women who disguise themselves and never talk back, dumb male keyboard warriors are never challenged by their quarries and have no reason to stop their bullying behaviour.” In this sentence, he demonstrates that he didn’t quite understand the point of Robertson’s piece: speaking out escalates sexist abuse, which is why it was so brave of Robertson to write what she did.